the music of ambient loop guitarist dave stafford and the pureambient microlabel

application-based music – day of reckoning

I decided to capture and copy everything that I’ve done with the fairlight pro application into sonar, and create a full set of 24-bit master mixes, so I could assess what I’ve achieved with this particular instrument since mid to late December.

in just three short months, I’ve created 17 (naturally) sessions in fairlight pro, containing 10 unique songs. one of those “songs” was my first ever test piece, which is not quite music – it’s listen-able, but not particularly wonderful, so it doesn’t really “count” – I used it to figure out how the app worked.

that then leaves nine, but one of the pieces, “resolve” is so far, unresolved 🙂 …

so that means I have eight pieces that could be considered to be finished, they are all final mixes, although I’ve basically just copied them without doing anything else to them – just a basic capture, but even in this utterly raw form, with no reverb or any overdubs or any processing of any kind – the tracks really are very, very unique, and I think that’s down to two things, basically: one, the unique and strange samples that come with the fairlight – so many unusual instruments and non-instruments to choose from, and two, the actual creation method – bar by bar, using your “eight-instrument virtual-instrument” to compose very, very slowly and methodically, measure by measure.

the latest and newest fairlight piece, recorded over the last two days, is entitled “unwinding prophecy” and it features yet another unique, new virtual “instrument” – this time, consisting of the later fairlight samples (from the “III” library, a library I haven’t used much before, most of my pieces to date have been done with the standard sample library) so that alone gave this piece a unique sound:

prophecy10

prophecy_3

prophecy_4

prophecy_8

cymbals02

choir03_012

bellfinger11

pianothumb12

(so, visual evidence of part of the inspiration for the piece’s title – the other part, “unwinding”, comes from the lyrics of “emergency splashdown” – a song from a roger powell solo album that was performed live by todd rundgren’s utopia – the line in question is “life chain unwinding…I’ve got split-second timing…” and curiously, the powell album also has on it, a song called “prophecy” – but really, I have NO idea how I reached this title – the prophecy part obviously came from the instrument names, but how I arrived at “unwinding prophecy” and the whole roger powell connection – well, all I can say is, the human brain works in strange, strange ways…)

speaking of humans, I don’t think I have ever used the “humans” bank of instruments before working on “unwinding prophecy”, and the samples of choirs are excellent indeed, really nice sounding, so having a sort of “thumb piano / bell / choir” approach worked very well for this new piece. based on this experience, I am absolutely going to use the “III” bank of samples much more in future, and of course, mix up the originals with them too – why not?

in fact, I do have at least one existing piece that uses voices from both the original and the later sample banks.

the new piece, “unwinding prophecy” has a really interesting, alternating-between-two-main-lead-instruments sound, where the bell finger sound carries most of the melody, but it’s coupled with, and occasionally replaced by, the thumb piano sound, and it’s an unlikely yet highly successful pairing. and I never dreamed I would “write” a thumb piano solo, but the middle section of the song is basically an accompanied thumb piano solo – a very strange little piece of music in the middle of a very strange medium sized piece of music 🙂

so I set out last night to capture every single fairlight pro track I’ve created to date; including all of the early mixes, prototypes, and alternate mixes. obviously, most of those will end up as curiosities, some of them are quite different from the “finished” versions, others are just early fragments and so on – but I find those to be almost as satisfying as the “real” versions.

what struck me most, immediately, is how short in duration most of the pieces are – a few of them, seem to end up around the one minute mark, others, maybe two minutes, and I think in the end, that only two tracks ended up being longer – “president evil” which is the longest of all the tracks, clocking in at around four and a half minutes; and, I’m not sure…I think perhaps the final mix of “the instruments of death” might be over three minutes.

otherwise, most of the pieces are surprisingly short (note to fairlight pro programmers: having a small timer display somewhere would be a helpful addition to the app!) but to my ear, that actually makes sense – these pieces are full of mood, strange, strange sampled sounds, arranged almost mathematically in some cases (such as “president evil” with it’s nearly symmetrical structure) but for some reason, tracks made with fairlight pro…sound like nothing else on this earth. they pack a lot of musical information into a small space, so you can “say” a lot in one minute – because of the powerful, unique, and very “real” sound of the fairlight sample library. so you can “say” in a minute with the fairlight sounds, what it might take you two or three minutes to “say” with a more traditional instrument – if that makes any sense to you!

it’s very odd, but they really are in a sort of “sound area” all their own. once you hear a piece made with the fairlight pro app, you will know what I am talking about (and yes, I do want to find a way to publish or otherwise make these tracks available, but – there is not enough material for an album yet – so it’s going to have to wait I am afraid…) – they just “sound” a certain way, very moody, very much like movie soundtrack music – for which they have not yet invented a cool enough movie.

I am loving working with this app, for one thing, it taught me to sequence, a skill I never really learned in all those years – up until last december, I always “played” music – but now, I can compose either way, by playing and or by sequencing – and I think that’s a useful skill. learning and understanding the composition process in fairlight pro, is what then consequently made it much easier to learn the sequencing part of the korg ims-20. speaking of the ims-20, I’ve been doing some work on a new dave stafford template there, so hopefully, that will become a backing track for a completed piece of music – eventually. it takes me longer to work on ims-20 pieces, but it will be worth the wait, I promise – I love that synth!

so I have become a huge fan of the fairlight pro app, and even though, for example, something like nanostudio is a fantastic place to compose using drum pads or a synthesizer keyboard (where of course, you “play” the parts), where you can just play parts with really high quality sounds, and get instant gratification – what you play is what you get – but…more and more, I continually find myself turning back to the fairlight pro, and find myself wanting to compose bar by bar using the fairlight. 🙂

In the end, of course, I am sure I will use both equally, but lately, I’ve tended to favour the fairlight pro over nanostudio (something if you asked me two months ago, I would have said – no way, nanostudio is the best – and it is – it’s a fantastic app, like the sonar of the ipad at the moment – if only you could add audio tracks, it would be the very best, but that will come I am sure) – but, I just love working with nanostudio and with the fairlight pro app.

when I did the initial capture of the tracks last night, this is what I ended up with:

so when I remove the test piece and the incomplete piece, for the moment, that leaves me with these eight final mixes:

feast for crow

happy bird orchestra

vainglorious

leap day

president evil

the instruments of death

nefertiti

unwinding prophecy

which to me, if albums were, you know, 20 minutes long, then this would be my new album!! all of these are basically complete, they are final mixes – so really, they are ready to go.

I think that since this process is working so well (and hearing all seventeen takes last night confirms and validates this for me), that I will just continue to create new pieces until I have enough for an album – and because many of the pieces are by nature quite brief, I think that may end up being a 25 or 30 track album – which I think would be fantastic. these eight pieces are among the most unique I have ever composed, I really can’t express in words what they sound like, all I can say is, I can’t wait to hear the eventual album! I am assuming from the success of these first eight tracks, that if I continue to compose in a similar way, that I will end up with 25 or 30 very unique / interesting “soundtrack tracks with no movie” as it were.

in fact, I’d venture to say, that the piece I just finished yesterday, “unwinding prophecy”, is in some ways the best piece so far – with it’s alternating bell finger and thumb piano lead, and a couple of very strange turns of time, where I put the fairlight to the test (and it passed with flying colours), this song is so, so strange – some of the odd melodies and even odder timings that you can create when you sequence instead of “play” a melody – that’s the beauty of the sequencer, because of course, it is like slowing down time – so a very quick melody with odd timing might be very difficult to “play” with your hands, but it’s very easy to sequence – because you can “play” that melody very slowly and then it do the playback “at speed”.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought as to whether I should add other instruments to these finished fairlight tracks, and after thinking about it, I’ve decided that doing so is mostly, not a good idea. the charm of these tracks really lay in the unique “set” of instruments chosen in your “virtual instrument”, so to add to that with other, non-fairlight instruments – would probably spoil it, and the mood created by the “all sample, all sequenced” approach would be ruined.

having said that, there are one or two pieces that use sampled guitars, and I think for those, I might create alternate, “hybrid”, versions and just add in some “real” rhythm guitars, just to augment those awesome power chords with some real guitar sound. so maybe, one or two pieces, some slight augmentation – I don’t know. I do know that most of these tracks are perfect as they are, they are “done” and I know better than to mess with them – they won’t get better than they are! I just need to trust my original decision, when I reached that point where I say to myself “this is the final version” – “that’s it.” You just know when that moment arrives…

later this week, I plan to do a similar exercise with all tracks recorded in nanostudio, there are perhaps, fewer tracks overall done in nanostudio, but, they are more elaborate, most have a constructed drum track and several synthesizer overdubs, and of course nanostudio has a mixer where you can add in individual or overall effects chains, so you can create a very sophisticated, high quality mix without moving the tracks to sonar. if you want to move the tracks and use the power of sonar, of course, you can…

again, though, most of these feel “finished” to me, and I believe that I may be developing a sort of “policy” with app-based music – originally, I had thought I would develop a piece in nanostudio or the fairlight, then, take it to sonar, add to it, enhance it, and that I would then have many pieces that are hybrid “app-based” and “daw-based”. the more I listen, though, to completed tracks made in the fairlight or in nanostudio, the more I feel they are “done”, they are fine as-is, and there is little or nothing I could do in sonar, beyond adding reverb using the “breeze” plug-in – so it may be, that my basic policy is that music made in applications, gets finished and final mixed in applications, and there is no need to create hybrids – and, music created in the DAW, probably doesn’t need anything brought in from the world of apps.

there will be exceptions – absolutely. I can already imagine it – if I have a rock track in sonar, and I need a hammond organ solo – well, why wouldn’t I dial up one of those amazing hammond sounds in garage band, hook up my 88-key keyboard to garage band, and have at it?

so for things like that, sure, hybrid “app-daw” tracks will absolutely have to happen (with this app on a tablet technology, all lines are beginning to blur – and really, almost anything is possible!). but I also tend to believe that for most tracks, they will remain separate (at least, for me, that’s my preference at the moment, anyway) – which is really testament for how complete the app-based music making experience is – you can create, mix and finish tracks without moving to you daw.

at the moment, the only reason I see to even move app-produced tracks to sonar is to allow me to add reverb/atmosphere to them – that’s about it. and to create the 24-bit master wav file too, I guess.

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